Even through the fog of a nasty
late-winter flu, Joaquin Phoenix remains achingly polite. "Thanks,"
he says softly when offered a ragged, perforated sheet of Bounty from
the kitchen. The 22-year-old actor, who is unavoidably known as brother
of the late actor River Phoenix, blows his streaming nose. "Sorry,"
he apologizes.

For a performer who has carved out an
offbeat movie career playing angry, alienated teens, his off-screen
persona is marked more by floor-gazing and foot-shuffling. "I'm
just a private person," he
admits exhaling a haze of chain-smoked Marlboros. "Sorry."
Joaquin was a TV adolescent-for-hire before bursting onto Hollywood
screens in 1989 as Dianne Wiest's sullen teen-age son
with a penchant for porno in "Parenthood."

His next big role came in the form of the
memorably menacing Jimmy -- the socially inept slacker with a dangerous
crush on Nicole Kidman in Gus Van Sant's 1995 black comedy "To Die
For." But between those roles, tragedy brought his private world
crashing down on Oct. 31, 1993. As his famous brother, River, lay
convulsing from a drug overdose outside a hot Los Angeles club on Sunset
Strip called the Viper Room, Joaquin was several yards away pleading for
help on a pay telephone. "You
must get here, please, you must get here,"
his anguished brother said, somehow remembering to say
"please" and "thank you" to the 911 emergency
dispatcher. "I'm
thinking he had Valium, or something." River
was pronounced dead Halloween morning at Cedars-Sinai Hospital. His
surviving brother's private grief is still raw. "It's a slow
process. I remember thinking as a kid, 'God, what would I do if I lost
my dad or mom?' I figured I'd go insane or kill myself," he
says. "But
somehow, for years, you're so damn out of it. You just sit there."

Joaquin took a multiyear hiatus from
Hollywood. He admits, somewhat sheepishly, that the script for "To
Die For" sat unread for many months. "I
just wasn't interested," he
says. "I just
have this tendency to expect the worst from a story. You know, I always
see really bad acting, for some reason."
Cajoled, he finally picked it up -- and then couldn't put it down. "It
was one of those strange experiences where, as I'm reading it, I know
what Jimmy's going to say before I read it. The feelings just sort of
pop out at me."No surprises there -- filmmaker Van
Sant's exploration of family relationships has been a special beacon to
the Phoenix tribe. River starred in the critically acclaimed "My
Own Private Idaho" in 1991 and sister Rain acted in "Even
Cowgirls Get the Blues" three years later. Since "To Die
For" launched him into the ranks of the up-and-comers, Joaquin has
managed to translate his on-screen intensity and brooding looks into
more adult roles.

This month, Phoenix leads some of
Hollywood's hottest young stars in director Pat O'Connor's touching
Eisenhower-era drama, "Inventing the Abbotts." He joins Billy
Crudup as two working-class brothers snared in a complex relationship
with three wealthy Midwest sisters, played by Jennifer Connelly, Joanna
Going and Liv Tyler. This time, there was no delay getting on board the
project. "Some
things just touch you, for whatever reason, and this felt so honest to
me," he says of the screenplay. "It
wasn't trying to be anything that it wasn't." Mr. Phoenix and Ms. Tyler -- who
since filming ended have been linked romantically -- make a memorable
on-screen couple. "I
was in awe," he says of his
curvaceous co-star. "Every
once in a while you find an actor that, with one word, can sum up eight
different emotions. She absolutely nailed that."The new film also revisits a rich
vein of story-telling Mr. Phoenix has previously mined. "I'm
definitely a sucker for family movies -- I love those kind of films. I
mean, I have no problem with explosions. That's all fine and dandy.
But generally I like to see real people,"
he says.

Born in Puerto Rico, he spent much of his
childhood on the move, living in Oregon, Mexico, South America and
Florida with his talented siblings -- River, Rain, Liberty and Summer --
while his parents struggled with odd jobs. "When
you grow up with a large family,"
he says, "you
have friends right there." One
day, while raking leaves with his father, Joaquin decided that he wanted
an earthy name like his siblings. His parents left the decision up to him.
Four-year-old Joaquin temporarily changed it to Leaf. "That's
what's so much fun about acting -- being a little kid. It's like playing
dress-up. You know, you do a war movie and get to run around in the
dirt. I have a blast," he says.
But impending stardom hasn't inured Mr. Phoenix to his hardscrabble
roots. He recalls the days when all five Phoenix kids were forced to
sneak into their tiny apartment, past the "No Kids, No Dogs"
signs. "We once
got this house on the corner that was the maid's quarters for another
house," he says. "But
to us, man, it was a mansion.""We worked
really hard to get to the point where we could own a house, where my dad
didn't have to break his back every day,"
he recalls. "That
broke my heart." Acting was a
natural escape: "I've
always felt when I was younger that there was something missing. I guess
you go through that growing up --
you want something. As soon as I started working as an actor, I just
felt this void had filled." But
Joaquin can't quite explain what it is about the Phoenix brood that has
produced so much creative talent. "It's
a great mystery," he says,
smiling. "That's
what's so wonderful about it. You just never know. It's this great fear
every time you go into
another movie. It's like, 'Oh my God, what's going to happen?' "And
it might leave, too," he warns,
not wishing to tempt fate.